There’s been a number of news items since the last post, so let’s go ahead and get them out shotgun-style!

New Dragon Age RPG Developer

Green Ronin has just announced that Will Hindmarch is the new Developer for the Dragon Age RPG! From their post:

Will Hindmarch is our new Dragon Age Developer. He has been working professionally in the game industry for the last decade. Will is an experienced developer, having run both White Wolf’sVampire: The Requiem line and Atlas Games’ Feng Shui line. He contributed to our Family Games: The 100 Best book and has done freelance work for companies such as Wizards of the Coast, Pelgrane Press, and Turbine. His first task will be helping us getDragon Age Set 3 finished, approved, and released.

We at the Dragon Age Oracle welcome Will with open arms and loaded Dragon Dice. You can find Will online at his website or as @wordwill on Twitter.

Likewise, we also want to extend our heartfelt thanks to departing Developer Jeff Tidball for all his work on the game. We wish him all the best in his new adventures.

Mike Evans (aka WrathOfZombie) sent me a link to this page via email and I was floored, both due to the quality of the work and to the simple fact that this awesome document was out there online and I didn’t know about it!

Behold the Esoterica of Thedas, Volume 2: Bestiary, a 76-page tome of Dragon Age monster goodness. The Esoterica covers all manner of creatures based on Dragon Age: Origins, presented for use in the tabletop roleplaying game. It also includes an 8-page Creature Creation section with tips and charts (including Size rules!), as well as nine new spells based on the videogame.

If that wasn’t enough, it then goes into a comprehensive bestiary ranging from domesticated animals to wild creatures, darkspawn to demons, constructs to dragons. Basically, if you saw it in Dragon Age: Origins, it’s probably in here.

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Green Ronin President, Chris Pramas, has written a message to the fans talking about the year ahead for the company. In it we get a few juicy tidbits about Dragon Age that we simply have to share.

After talking briefly about the current releases for Dragon Age Dark Fantasy Roleplaying (Set 1, Game Master’s Kit and Blood in Ferelden) and the open playtest they held for material to be included in Set 2 (covering levels 6-10), he gets to the great news:

We know people are hungry for Set 2 and it is indeed on the way. We are trying to release it shortly after the debut of the Dragon Age 2 computer game, so we can take advantage of the new wave of DA enthusiasm.

Though BioWare has not mentioned an official release date for Dragon Age 2, it all seems to indicate a Spring 2011 release, so let’s hope that in a few months we’ll finally have the Dragon Age RPG Set 2!

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One of the things that really drew me to the Dragon Age RPG when Green Ronin published it was that it was created and sold as an introductory roleplaying game product, meaning that the box for Set 1 was supposed to be something you could give someone who’s never played a tabletop RPG and they’d be able to use that to learn and start gaming. After being a roleplaying gamer for over 25 years I hardly qualify as a newbie, but as someone who got initiated into this wonderful world via another box set oh-so-many years ago, I wanted to see if this new set could serve as the gateway for a new generation of potential gamers in my family. I say all this simply to underscore one important point: I got the Dragon Age RPG solely on the basis of it as a tabletop roleplaying game product, period.

Now, the title of this post is obviously facetious, as I know full well that Dragon Age is tied to a very successful video game. Thing is, I’ve never played the video game. Ever. The most contact I’ve had with it was watching a couple of the origin cinematics at a friend’s house while we waited for the other players to arrive for our Dragon Age RPG session that night. I had to ask on Twitter who was that woman you can see on the top-right corner of the box artwork (right) because I kept seeing her over and over in promotional art for the game. And the guy in the promotional art for the upcoming Dragon Age II? No idea either.